Sunday, February 12, 2012

Epstein says that his decision to publish his new book on Facebook,
where it appears in a photo-album format, was a response to the
situation of the publishing market in Israel: "I'm not saying anything
new when I say that the vast majority of writers and poets in Israel are
unable to make a decent living from their work." The fact that Epstein cannot support himself
from his books is not the heart of the matter; that's already
self-evident. What bothers him is the short shelf life of books in the
stores.

"In the case of a writer like me," he
explains, "who isn't a mainstream and best-selling author, what happens
is that the literature has a very hard time reaching the readers. The
only way is via the 'book cemetery' that is sometimes called Tzomet
Sfarim and sometimes Steimatzky's" - the country's two largest bookstore
chains. "A book in those stores is sold not as a cultural item but as a
consumer item of the shallowest possible kind. Not because it isn't
good, but because that way it gets sold."

Epstein says this paradox confronts many
writers and poets: "It's one thing that you don't make a profit, but in
the present situation nobody can even read you, because the books don't
really reach anyone. What I tried to examine is whether it's possible to
reach a relatively broad audience without going through the usual
intermediary, who is systematically interested in money rather than
culture. I'm interested in the work and not its financial aspect."

The Publisher's Association in the UK is proposing a copyright registry (Bookseller):

The Publishers Association has called for the creation of a Digital
Copyright Exchange (DCE), which would act as a "one stop shop" for the
exchange of information about how to license copyright online.

The PA has argued the online platform would negate the need for
"dangerous" changes to copyright law proposed by the government in
parallel consultation on copyright.
In a submission to the feasibility study into the DCE, which closes
today (10th February), the PA urged government to suspend progress of
the parallel Copyright Consultation launched by the Intellectual
Property Office late last year, which recommends "drastically weakening"
copyright. The body thinks the proposals would remove or undermine the
ability of rightsholders to develop licensing business models, and "go
against the grain" of the market-based voluntary arrangements proposed
in the DCE.

This makes the next step trickier for publishers vying this week for the
rights to her memoir, whose blockbuster allure has a backdrop of
unsettling details: Ms. Knox was arrested in 2007 in the murder of her
roommate, Meredith Kercher, in what prosecutors described as a sex
escapade gone wrong, spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and
was exonerated last October after an appeals court overturned the
original conviction.

The surge of media attention that will surely accompany the book’s
release — normally good for publishers — comes with risks. To some
members of the public, Ms. Knox was an innocent abroad who was
imprisoned for a crime she did not commit. To others, she is a cunning
femme fatale who got away with murder.

And that brings some difficult questions: do book-buying Americans see
Ms. Knox as a sympathetic figure? And if the book commands a
seven-figure advance, as is widely expected, will it be worth it?

What is Big Data? A meme and a marketing term, for sure, but also
shorthand for advancing trends in technology that open the door to a new
approach to understanding the world and making decisions. There is a
lot more data, all the time, growing at 50 percent a year, or more than
doubling every two years, estimates IDC, a technology research firm.
It’s not just more streams of data, but entirely new ones. For example,
there are now countless digital sensors worldwide in industrial
equipment, automobiles, electrical meters and shipping crates. They can
measure and communicate location, movement, vibration, temperature,
humidity, even chemical changes in the air.

Link these communicating sensors to computing intelligence and you see
the rise of what is called the Internet of Things or the Industrial
Internet. Improved access to information is also fueling the Big Data
trend. For example, government data — employment figures and other
information — has been steadily migrating onto the Web.

In 2009,
Washington opened the data doors further by starting Data.gov, a Web site that makes all kinds of government data accessible to the public. Data is not only becoming more available but also more understandable to
computers. Most of the Big Data surge is data in the wild — unruly
stuff like words, images and video on the Web and those streams of
sensor data. It is called unstructured data and is not typically grist
for traditional databases.

But the computer tools for gleaning knowledge and insights from the
Internet era’s vast trove of unstructured data are fast gaining ground.
At the forefront are the rapidly advancing techniques of artificial
intelligence like natural-language processing, pattern recognition and
machine learning.

Interesting article about returning to Ireland and the ghost of John Synge (NYT)

John Millington Synge writes of walking to see these beehive huts (clochans in
Gaelic) in “The Aran Islands,” his classic account of living here for
several months in the 1890s, when he gathered the material for his
greatest plays. No other writer is more closely associated with this
place and its people than Synge, although in many ways he makes an
unlikely representative. He was Anglo-Irish, Protestant in his
upbringing, fairly well to do, scientifically minded — there could have
been, at the time, few Irish people possessing less in common with the
peasantry he wound up making his subject and taking for his inspiration.
Even in his famed descriptions, you can sense a remoteness. It was the
artist in him, the very thing that made him a great writer. He never
loved his own people too much to be able to see what was grotesque and
silly and consequently most human in them. On his walk to the beehive
huts, he’s following an old blind man named Mourteen, a local
storyteller who gave him all sorts of material. The man knows the
islands so well that Synge cuts his feet trying to keep up, despite the
fact that his guide can’t see — “so blind that I can gaze at him without
discourtesy,” is Synge’s phrase. The old man at one point indulges “a
freak of earthly humour” and starts talking sex, saying what he would do
if he could bring a girl into the hut with him. They pass a house where
a schoolteacher lives alone. “Ah, master,” the old man says, “wouldn’t
it be fine to be in there and to be kissing her?” It’s just the kind of
scene that Synge’s detractors hated him for. The heroism of his
characters comes purely from their helpless urge to be themselves,
against all better judgment.

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Michael Cairns

I enjoy discussing the publishing industry and in particular the changes that impact the business. On PND, I don't write about everything, just the things that interest me.

My career spans a wide range of publishing and information products, services and B2B categories and my operating and consulting experience has largely been with brand-name companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, AARP, R.R. Bowker and Wolters Kluwer.

I have served as a board member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and in addition to my responsibilities at R.R. Bowker, l also served as Chairman of the International ISBN Executive Committee.